COLUMBUS - Gov. John Kasich campaigned for president on the nearly $8 billion budget "deficit" he and his allies say former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland left him, saying he turned Ohio around.

That word "deficit" isn't accurate, reporters and fact checkers repeatedly have said. Ohio never had a deficit. The amount represented a projection. The state was on track to be nearly $8 billion in the red had it not cut spending in 2011.

But a "deficit"? This time, Kasich and his fellow Republicans aren't using that word.

What they said

"No one else in the race can match Governor Kasich’s record of results," said a March 2016 memo from Kasich campaign strategist John Weaver. One example he gave: "turning an $8 billion deficit into a $2 billion surplus." The "surplus" referenced the state's replenished rainy-day fund.

The political action committee that supported Kasich's presidential campaign used the same line. Kasich "turned Ohio’s $8 billion deficit into a multi-billion-dollar surplus," said one ad from March 2016.

Kasich himself hasn't used the word "deficit" as much as his political staff, allies and ads. Often he has used phrases such as "$8 billion in the hole." But not always.

"When they were in charge, they left me ... an $8 billion deficit," he told reporters this April, referring to Democrats. "Now we have $2 billion in our rainy-day fund."

What they're saying now

And what would Kasich call the current situation? "A challenge."

In the same remarks to reporters in April, Kasich said: "They left me with a disaster, which we had to claw out of. So while this is a challenge, this is nothing compared to what we had to do when I came into office."

His budget director, Tim Keen, had a more technical interpretation.

"We now need to make an adjustment," Keen told The Enquirer last week . "We need to adjust the budget that is pending in the Legislature. We need to get it in a place where ongoing revenues will cover ongoing expenditures.”

What's wrong

"Deficit" or no, Ohio’s budget crunch is significantly less severe than the one the state faced in 2011. Lawmakers are expecting to have to cut around $800 million from the state’s two-year budget before they pass it at the end of June. They had to cut $7.7 billion in 2011.

The state is facing different circumstances, too.

Before 2011, Ohio had already drawn down its fiscal reserves, often called the “rainy-day fund,” to keep from raising taxes or cutting state programs as the state dealt with the aftermath of the recession. So when Kasich came into office, the budget wasn't going to be balanced without some sort of major change to state spending or taxes.

Keen, getting technical again, says the state might not have been running a deficit entering 2011, but it was operating under a budget that was “structurally imbalanced.” Kasich blames Strickland – although Republicans controlled the Senate and Democrats controlled the House in 2009 and 2010 – for draining the rainy-day fund to make ends meet, instead of cutting programs to set the state on a realistic course for later years.

In other words, the state had used "one-time money" to balance its budget, Keen said. (Democrats argue that was the right thing to do because the state was exiting a recession, and Ohioans couldn't have sustained cuts to state programs while they were hurting.)

Ohio's situation is different now, Keen said. Yes, the state's tax revenues are lagging projections because of an economy growing slower than Team Kasich and their economists predicted.

But Kasich and GOP lawmakers have avoided using one-time money for their budgets, like Strickland did in 2009, Keen said. They are trying to pass budgets where tax revenues and state spending are equal.

This time, taxes haven't brought in enough money for state spending. Hence, as Keen put it, the "adjustment."

Jessie Balmert of The Enquirer's Columbus bureau contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly described the makeup of the Ohio Legislature in 2009 and 2010. Republicans controlled the Senate. Democrats controlled the House.